Laurie Oakes: Bloggers will take mainstream media on a race to the bottom
Veteran journalist Laurie Oakes has warned that bloggers are threatening to “push the mainstream media into a race to the bottom”.
The prediction came as part of Oakes’ delivery of the Andrew Olle Media Lecture. Oakes, Nine’s political editor, said:
“This prediction was going to be mine when I drafted my lecture, but I find Julian Disney has beaten me to it. So I‟d better give him credit.
“The Press Council chairman says the greatest challenge is the risk that the blogosphere, with its tendency to rush to judgement and circulate scuttlebutt, will push the mainstream media into a race to the bottom. That, he believes, is the cut-throat competition of the future.
“In Britain, political blogger Guido Fawkes—who happily runs stories without the kind of investigation and verification mainstream journalists are supposed to require– boasts that the news is no longer defined by big media.
“Big media proves that by following him.
“In the US big media follows Matt Drudge and his ilk.
“Of course it will happen here.”
His prediction that “Bloggers will start to usurp the role of determining what is news,” was one of four he gave to the audience.
Two others were that political journalists would be bypassed more and more by politicians using new media to talk directly to the public, and that “Spin will become even more pervasive and powerful”.
His other prediction was “the industrialisation of journalism”.
He predicted: “More stories being produced for more outlets at ever greater speed by fewer people—will gather pace, with consequences unlikely to be pretty.
“The trend overseas is towards more predictable news presented in more uniform formats because this is more efficient. It‟s sometimes described as McJournalism or–in the words of the BBC‟s respected political correspondent Andrew Marr—’bite-sized McNugget journalism’.
“My fear is that tomorrow‟s press gallery will be serving up Happy Meals.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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I understand why Mumbrella took this angle, but this wasn’t the half of what Laurie said — and much of it was actually quite inspirational for the future of journalists and journalism in 2011. You can find the full text here:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/st.....345509.htm
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Thanks for the link Renai. I agree the full thing is well worth a read. I’ll also add a link from the copy.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I don’t think it will be “bloggers” that will lead the race to the bottom.
More like “idiots” that masquerade as people that know things, when they don’t. 😉
But then that’s not an exclusive domain of bloggers only, is it. All walks of journalism suffers from that at times.
Idiots are what will lead the race to the bottom.
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Journalists are already racing each other to the bottom. Bloggers won’t be able to add much to this.
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If he said that and meant it he’s an idiot. Mainstream media won the race to the bottom some time ago. Many bloggers are the voice of reason. Looks like there’s more to it than that though according to Renai.
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‘Au contraire’ the low-lying uninformed stuff is usually in the anonymous comments section, but not always of course.
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Mr Oakes fools himself and his audience if he thinks there is some generic class of people called ‘bloggers’. That thinking is already nearly a decade out-of-date. So 2004. Many ‘bloggers’ are far better informed and educated on their chosen subject (be it economics, politics, climate science, literature you name it) then most journalists. That’s why bloggers are influential. Mr Oakes career as his speech and his adorers confirmed on friday night has been all about the scoop. Certainly, that sort of journalism has lost its cache. Mr Oakes speech was more about the past – it had a distinct please stop the world spinning I want to get off please feel to it. Perhaps, a grumpy guide to journalism in the Internet age …. If this is what journalists see as ‘inspiring’ then they need to get out more.
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If the MSM gave us the truth. Blogger would cease to exist.
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